Virtual Appliance Guide

Deploy the Virtual Appliance

Rapid7 provides a Virtual Hard Disk file (VMDK).

1. Download the Virtual Appliance:
   • Virtual Appliance Security Console
   • Virtual Appliance Scan Engine
2. In Virtualbox, click New to create a new virtual appliance virtual machine.
3. Create the environment for the virtual machine by providing the following information and then click Continue:
   • Name - Rapid7 Security Console Trial
   • Type - Linux
   • Version - Ubuntu (64-bit)
4. Select the amount of RAM in megabytes and click Continue. We recommend at least 16384MB.
5. Click Choose to import an existing disk. Find and select the VMDK that you downloaded in step 1 and click Open.
6. Select Use an existing virtual hard disk file and choose the VMDK that you imported, and then click Create.
7. Go to Virtual Machine > Settings > System. Then, increase the Processor count to 4 and click Ok.
8. Power on the system and click the Console tab to view a terminal window for the Virtual Appliance.
9. To login, enter nexpose for both the username and password, and then run the command ip a to check the current IP address of the machine.
   • The IP address is static and should persist through reboots.

10. In order to access the Security Console from your browser, you must configure the forwarding port to the virtual machine. In the Virtualbox settings menu, select the Network tab. There, display the advanced options and select Port forwarding.
11. Using the Security Console IP address, configure a rule to allow access to the service running on the virtual machine. Enter the following rule configurations and then click Create > Ok > Ok:
    • Name - Security Console Browser Access
    • Protocol - TCP
    • Host IP - 127.0.0.1
    • Host Port - 3780
    • Guest IP - the IP address retrieved in step 9
    • Guest Port - 3780
12. In a new browser window, log in to the Security Console by entering nxadmin as your username and password to confirm that the network connectivity is working.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I set up a dynamic IP?

The virtual machine comes without any networking preconfigured. To have a dynamic IP assigned by the hypervisor, run sudo dhclient.

How do I set up a static IP?

The recommended method of setting a static IP is to use netplan.

Before you begin setting the network configuration, you need to know which interface to set as each hypervisor will label them differently. To find the name of the networking interface, use the command ip a. The first device is the loopback, device 2 is the interface you need to set.

Note the label of the interface for example, ens32 or enp0s17.

Once you have the name of the interface you need to set, open the /etc/netplan/00-installer-config.yaml file in a text editor with the following command:

 
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sudo nano /etc/netplan/00-installer-config.yaml

As there are a multitude of possible network configurations, see the following sample configuration below as an example:

How do I specify DNS servers?

DNS should be set in the netplan configuration (nameservers array).

How do I restart networking?

To restart the networking service, use the following command:

 
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sudo netplan apply

This command will apply the configuration specified in the netplan configuration file in addition to completely restarting the networking service.

How do I set the system time?

System date and time are controlled using the timedatectl utility.

To set the time, use the following command, where $TIME is the desired time:

 
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sudo timedatectl set-time $TIME

To set the timezone, use the following command, where $TZ is the desired timezone:

 
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sudo timedatectl set-timezone $TZ

How do I start, stop, and check the status of the console and engine services?

Console

 
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sudo systemctl status nexposeconsole.service
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sudo systemctl start nexposeconsole.service
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sudo systemctl stop nexposeconsole.service

Engine

 
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sudo systemctl status nexposeengine.service
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sudo systemctl start nexposeengine.service
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sudo systemctl stop nexposeengine.service